Australian ISPs Required To Report Child Porn

rolling_or_jaded writes "As of the 1st of March 2005, Australian ISPs and web hosts will face fines of up to $55,000 if they can be used to access child pornography and do not refer the information to the police. Yikes. How on earth are the ISPs (and web hosts -- like my own very small-time and humble company) supposed to enforce this?"

Comments

With vaporware

[surefooted1]

How on earth are the ISPs (and web hosts -- like my own very small-time and humble company) supposed to enforce this?
With vaporware!

Re:With vaporware

[Anonymous Coward]

nope - just set up an email address 'reportchildport@myisp.net' that forwards to 'postmaster@police.gov' and put it on your front page

Re:With vaporware

[jgardner100]

Stop the world, I want to get off as there is no sign of intelligent life here.

As an asside, they are planning to ban parents from taking photos during school swimming carnivals soon here in Australia for fear of pedophiles taking photographs.

People are trying to look like they are doing something even though their proposed "solutions" make no sense.

Re:With vaporware

[digitalchinky]

Although it is not required for any billeted job description, many of us in front end DSD collection and survey positions DO report child porn and IP addresses (Plus lots of other data) to Australian federal police - regardless of source. Australian originator or not, child porn is not even nearly as nice as cancer. It is just fucked up sick. (No apologies for language - I see this too often, it disgusts me)

Quite a bit of this crap goes over non-public links, weakly encrypted (they likely think it's hot shit though) so not much escapes.

The feeling is nice when you get a call across stu-III or wherever, interpol, whoever, saying thankyou - 'we got the bastards'

Re:With vaporware

[Danious]

OK, people, reality check here. In all fairness to the luddites up in Canberra (for whom I did not vote), the law only requires ISP's and hosts to report child porn to the police when it is brought to their attention by a 3rd party.

They are NOT required to go looking for it.

They are NOT required to pre-screen content before allowing posting/hosting.

They are NOT required to take preventative measures.

They are NOT required to implement filtering or blocks.

Get the message?

All the law says is that they are NOT allowed to turn a blind eye when someone complains about child porn hosted on or transmitted through their facilities. Then all they have to do is forward the complaint on to the police for action.

This is no worse than doctors being required to report signs of child abuse in their patients.

John.

Re:With vaporware

[garwil]

Most schools in my local area (Essex, England) have banned parents from taking photos/videos at school plays/sports events etc. for the same reason. That's all well and good but the cost of buying videos/photos from the school is prohibitive for a lot of parents (especially in big families), plus there's the fact that for most of these events, only the parents can buy tickets anyway.

Meanwhile, back on topic, if I knew that someone was downloading child porn, my first point of contact would be the police, not their ISP. The fine also seems pretty pointless, considering that its such a small amount. If its a major company like BT or NTL, they would probably make that sort of money in the time it took you to submit the report.

it's simple

[Fo0eY]

just enable the evil bit of course

New jobs?

[wannabgeek]

Does it mean they're going to hire people to go through all porn and judge which is legal?! Where can I send my resume?!?!

Re:New jobs?

[Neil Blender]

Does it mean they're going to hire people to go through all porn and judge which is legal?!

I used to work for a free adult host. One thing I did was write a system to monitor the bandwidth usage of individual users and display the results, sorted high to low by megabits, everyday. The regular users were obvious, you knew who they were and what their sites consisted of. But pretty much everyday, 1 or 2 sites would jump to the top of the list. These sites were always newly created and they were always child porn. I would then go and delete the accounts and the files. The FBI, US Customs and local PD all told me it was illegal to delete, move or even shut down child porn sites. We had to rotate our logs 3 times a day, so by the time the authorities came by (on their own investigations) the evidence was always long gone. We hated the CP for what it was, but it also consumed huge amounts of bandwidth so we couldn't afford to keep it around.

This shit popped up every single day of the week. I used to roam the CP bbses which advertised the new sites and post stuff like "THE FBI IS MONITORING (the company I worked for.)" It would freak the shit out them.

Heh, I still have an old file cabinet from that company that is labeled "The PedoFile."

How do they decide?

[JohnnyKlunk]

How do you decide what's child porn and whats good old regular normal porn
Ok, if we're talking about pre-teens and the like then it's obvious - but how do you know for sure if someone is older than the appropriate age for the legal jurisdiction in which the download takes place?
Given the wonders of make up and photography and different countries/states may decide that 16 / 18 / 21 is considered under age.

Re:How do they decide?

[redphive]

I work for an ISP and we recently had a friendly informational meeting with our local police. It was pretty much a get to know you kind of thing.

In talking, the topic of child porn came up as it would be something we cooperate should that type of investigation land on our networks door-step. The Officer said that they could have found 20 images of a 'child' in various stages of undress, and the last one was an image of a fully disclothed child, but without a clear shot of their face. Out of all of that they would have no way (with out obvious birthmarks and the like) to classify any of the images as child pornography because there was no definitive way to link the final image to the identity of the child.

Pretty depressing stuff, but that is the reality the poice face when trying to prosecute this kind of thing.

Imagine the steps ISPs would have to do to come to the same conclusions.

Simple solution

[Jesus 2.0]

"As of the 1st of March 2005, Australian ISPs and web hosts will face fines of up to $55,000 if they can be used to access child pornography and do not refer the information to the police. Yikes. How on earth are the ISPs (and web hosts -- like my own very small-time and humble company) supposed to enforce this?"

Easy:

Dear Police,

My ISP can be used to access child pornography.

Thanks,

Every ISP on Earth

Re:Simple solution

[zcat_NZ]

Yep, those sanctions are really killing us here. Suck it up and grow a backbone.

Re:Simple solution

[sasha328]

This just shows how "elitist" some of the commenters are; they all pretty much seem to be saying that, the police or the government don't know what they're legislating.
Of course, some of the regulations can not be fully enforced, but that does not mean they shouldn't be legislated.
I have worked for one of the top 3 ISPs in Australia, and they do work quite closely with the police. This is mainly in the tracking side of things: threatening emails, spam, etc.
By the way, you seem to have misunderstood the fines part of the article. The fines are not for using an ISP to access CP, but it is for not disclosing who is accessing CP when they find out. It is essentially an extension of the existing child abuse legislation: if you suspect abuse, you have to report it!

Periodic Hysterias

[Martin Taylor]

These sorts of hysterias happen every now and then. People get all up in arms about drugs, child abductions, terrorism, alcohol, $BLAH... and all of a sudden the rules need to be changed to protect us all from the menace that threatens to corrupt our children and anally rape them with a crack pipe.

Civil liberties mean nothing when you can get a good hysteria going.

simple solution for an ISP...

[TheSHAD0W]

Set up a non-transparent firewall requiring everyone to use a web proxy to access the internet at large. Then, whenever someone accesses a file ending in .gif, .jpg, .bmp or .png using their browser, forward a copy of that file to the police along with a note stating that it may be an example of child pornography and asking them to investigate further. That should put you in complete compliance with the law.

RTFA

[ToshiroOC]

From the article:
Under the new laws, an ISP or ICH will face penalties of $11,000 for the individual and $55,000 for body corporates if they are made aware that their service can be used to access material that they have reasonable grounds to believe is child pornography or child abuse material and they do not refer details of that material to the AFP within a reasonable time.

What that equates to is if child porn is reported to the ISP/webhost, they have to then report it to the Australian police quickly or face penalties. This isn't some ridiculous content-policing scheme - its just imposing a penalty on those who don't forward child pornography reports to the police at a reasonable pace.

Re:RTFA

[shark72]

"What that equates to is if child porn is reported to the ISP/webhost, they have to then report it to the Australian police quickly or face penalties."

Correct. Just as has been the case for several years in the USA.

When this happened to me -- somebody let me know that a member of my site was using their storage to host child porn, I very quickly called the FBI, who in turn sent me to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

For me, there was no gray area. I didn't think for one minute of my rights being violated. I didn't think for one minute about losing my Slashdot cred (which, by definition, I must not have in the first place) by doing so. In short, the phrase "your rights online" did not even occur to me; if any phrase came to mind, it was "you shore got a purdy mouth" or some similar one that I envisioned the scumbag hearing sometime soon.

In short, I think that if an ISP operator is upset by a law that requires them to report child pornography to the authorities once they're made aware of it, then perhaps they shouldn't be running an ISP.

Re:RTFA

[koreaman]

by way of comparison you are not required by law to report sites which advocate murder, detail murders planned or already committed, or if you know anyone who is planning a murder. there are no penalties for keeping your mouth shut if you're not directly involved. even if someone dies as a result.

That's because these sites are much less prevalent than child porno sites.

and in many cases the penalty for mere posession of child pornography is longer and harsher (9 to 11 years) than that of say, armed robbery (typically 5 years or less).
I would consider giving a child emotional scars that will haunt them forever worse than holding up a 7-11.

a one time convicted child porn downloader may get a long prison sentence and then a lifefime of "monitoring" (basically, supervised probation). a repeat violent criminal (armed robbery, assault, even murder) would typically get a prison sentence (often very short), a few years probation at most, then that's it.

You're wrong. Repeat violent criminals get put in the pen for a _very_ _long_ _time_.

a convicted child porn downloader is required to register with the local police, and they inform the local population. that a dangerous pedophile lives amongst them. a nice publically announced and endorsed target for vigilantes (and that is the point i guess, to encourage vigalantism). basically shouting it from the rooftops. ignoring the fact that the vast majority of child abuse is by parents or close relatives.

This is not done to encourage vigilantiism, it is done to let people know who they live near. This crime is by nature a habitual one, and anyone guilty of it has a high probability of doing sick things in the future. That's why the authorities must keep a close eye on them, and warn people to *be careful* who live nearby.

a convicted murderer is not required to register with anyone, and there is no requirement to inform the population that a violent criminal lives near them.

Murder is, generally speaking, not a habitual crime.

most strange, these so-called 'morality' laws.

What do you mean, "so-called"? Do you think it's perfectly fine and moral to publish child pornography?

Hype

[ChimpyMonkey]

The legislation does not require ISPs to monitor customer usage to pick up on illegal use. It is purely there to ensure that when an ISP becomes aware of specific content, that they report it.

To read an official summary of the legislation, check out this site: http://www.ag.gov.au/ISPresponsibilities

Re:Hype

[grcumb]

This is not out of step with other nations, either. In Canada, the law states that anyone finding child pornography is legally obligated to report it. There are heavy penalties for failing to do so.

Exactly.

[anti-NAT]

Couldn't have said it better myself.

I'm sure the government is now trying to work out how to get the voice telcos to report that their voice networks can be used to arrange child abductions by groups of pedophiles too.

Slightly misleading

[DaCool42]

From the article, it sounds more like ISPs will be required to notify authorities if they are made aware of a specific instance of child pornography.

Read the law first *then* make comments

[Anonymous Coward]

For gods sake read the new ruling first. Then make comments.

a) It's not a new law it's merely an amedment to the existing legislation

b) It only kicks in if the ISP is found to know about access to or hosting of child porn. It does *not* expect the ISP to watch for access to child porn. It is merely an incentive for ISP's to actually report access to or hosting of child porn rather than wiping/disconnecting user and pretending it never happened.

Yes I'm aware of what the media is saying. It's the medias job to beef up things like this and it keeps the "won't anyone think of the children!" brigade happy.

The law does not force ISP's to do filtering, it does not expect them to block access to child porn site it only ensures that ISP's report known access/hosting to the AFP within a decent time frame. Something just about every sysadmin with a sense of ethics would do in any case here in Australia in any event.

Re:Why the isp's?

[shark72]

"Seiously How are they even going to try to enforce this? Unless They have an army of trained web-content filtering monkeys, it's going to be next to impossible."

I'll break it down for you:

• Somebody notifies you of one of your subscribers posting kiddie porn on a web page you host.
• You spend one minute out of your busy day viewing the web page and you suspect that it may indeed be kiddie porn.
• So you tell the authorities.
• Then you go back to reading Slashdot.

If anybody can't be bothered to investigate a report of suspected kiddie porn on their own server, then they should not be running an ISP.

A new low...

[dantheman82]

when even the editor/original poster have not RTFA in its entirety. It clearly shows that if it comes to the attention of an ISP, then they must (by law) pass it on.

You know...I heard saw the Slashdot title on "Report Child Porn" in the RSS feed and I seriously was wondering why the editor was asking for links to child porn sites. A travesty indeed!

Since when has context been important, anyway?!?

Yes, actually

[beldraen]

One of the main complaints of current laws is that there is no intent written into the law. It is an interesting age that using your own computer can instantly be a felony should you mis-type a URL, a trojan from an exploit begins pop-ups or Googled more than you expected.

People seem to think that just because your computer is in your home that you are safe. The computer is a doorway that can let every seedy thing in the world find a way into your house and should be treated as such.

PLEASE UPDATE THE STORY

[Anonymous Coward]

The law only requires that ISPs forward customers' reports about child porn to the authorities. The Slashdot summary is totally incorrect.

There are no issues like you mention, because this story is total rubbish.

Slandering the Australian Government is tradition on Slashdot, but this story really takes the cake.

Re:Ridiculous.

[techno-vampire]

Okay, let me be the devil's advocate here. I think this is ridiculous. I'm not a pedophile by any means...

No, just a typical Slashdotter, more interested in shooting from the lip than in bothering to RTFA. As several other posters have already pointed out, this law requires ISPs that learn about kiddy porn on their systems, or viewed through their systems, to report the incident to the police in a reasonably timely manner, and nothing else. It doesn't make them responsible for content, it doesn't force them to censor anything, it doesn't force them to do anything at all except report kiddy porn to the police. Now please, get off your soapbox, back on your meds and next time, RTFA before showing everybody what a fool you are.

Re:This is SAD

[Mycroft_VIII]

Problem is this is thought-crime. When what a person is THINKING is what makes something a crime something is wrong. Lets just start with the fact that since there is no way to show the thoughts a person has in there head you have no possible proof of guilt, so it's eigther a non starter or a convienient way to incarcerate someone on a whim.

Mycroft

Don't demonise them

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at what defines child porn.

US: Sexual acts depicted on women under the age of 18
UK: Sexual acts depicted on women under the age of 16

So it's sick if you bang a 17 yo in the US but fine and healthy to do it in the UK.

Also, the US proposed a law saying that child porn would include poses by adult women dressed up as underage girls (no dressing up as a tarty schoolgirl!).

Legally, kiddie porn is banging a young woman. According to what is used as the reason for all the draconian laws and rights removal, kiddie porn is screwing six year olds.

In several cases, the molester (not always male!) was assaulted as a child. They've been fucked up in the head and now, to prove they are grown up, they do what grown ups did to them.

Sad, but not sick.

Personally, I don't recognise kiddie porn. I recognise rape. I understand that even consentual sex may not be correct if the situation is such that consent is not informed (rape drugs, retarded adults, young children), but that is only loosly correlated with age.

Think about this: it used to be absolutely fine and dandy to marry at nine (especially if you were royalty). Now we say "you must be 16" or 18, or 21, or 14... The fact that the age of consent changes shows that there is a band where it's not right, but it may not be wrong.

For these reasons and more, I will not demonise people accused of child abuse.

Re:Don't demonise them

[Ligur]

Look at what defines child porn.

US: Sexual acts depicted on women under the age of 18
UK: Sexual acts depicted on women under the age of 16

So... If I paint a pornographic picture on my 17yo girlfriends belly, that's childporn?
*ducks*

Re:Don't demonise them

[minimunchkin]

"So yes, I WILL demonize people accused of child abuse."

I hope that you will at least wait until they are convicted.

Re:Don't demonise them

[arkanes]

It can be harder than you think to break that cycle (it's not just child abuse that's involved in this sort of thing, it's just one of the more extreme examples). You aren't breaking it, after all, you're just reacting. That said, it's a reason and not an excuse. I believe that people should be given the opportunity to get help in breaking those kinds of cycles, although that shouldn't excuse them from responsiblity. We take a very visceral no-tolerance view of child pornography, which is kind of wierd in view of our much more lenient (as a society) views of plain old non-sexual abuse, and I don't think it neccesarily helps. Address causes, not symptoms.

That doesn't mean, of course, that you should ignore child abusers, nor that they get free passes, nor that they get away scott free.

Re:Don't demonise them

[gimpboy]

So yes, I WILL demonize people accused of child abuse.

I heard that sgant likes to molest children. So now anyone can demonize him/her.

Really though. When I was 16 I was accused of molesting my sisters. The time when these sick things were to have occured, I wasn't even in the same state. It's fortunate that I was out of town. A friend of mine and I were taken into custody and questioned without our parents or an attorney present. We were asked questions like:

"Are you sure you and your friend didn't smoke a little weed and decide to have a good time?"

My mother was out of town that week on business and my father (whom I was visiting when the alleged acts occured) lives in another state.

It turns out the people in daycare got it in their heads that my sisters had been molested. My sisters were taken by the police and questioned. Medical exams, preformed on my sisters without the consent of or even informing my mother or their father, showed no such abuse.

During the questioning, they never asked me where I was when these acts were to have occured. This all came up later. In the absence of any physical evidence and going on the coerced word of 4 and 2 year olds, they turned to the only other man in the house. They then started accusing my mothers boyfriend (my sisters father). Now I have a pretty low opinion of the man, but he's not a child molester.

See none of these facts mattered. I had been accused of molsesting children in a small town. That was enough to demonize me in the eyes of some of the parents of my friends. One of which was a juvenal probation officer who believes to this day that I'm a child molester.

Yet another act of pointless legislation *sigh*

[@madeus]

Alas, it seems to be yet another act of entirely pointless legislation (sadly all to common all over the world) and a waste of tax payers money and parliamentary time.

All the law says is that they are NOT allowed to turn a blind eye when someone complains about child porn hosted on or transmitted through their facilities. Then all they have to do is forward the complaint on to the police for action.

I would assume it is illegal for them not to report it to the police in Australia, although I don't know what the legal situation is there I'd wager they already legally bound to report all criminal activity (and I'm sure possession of child pornography falls into that category).

What is it with politicians and trying to push through redundant legislation for causes in the public eye?

Surely it's more efficent and appropriate to ensure we are enforcing the appropriate laws we do have - and if they are unenforceable, amend them appropriately rather than create an unfathomable myriad of narrow 'crime specific' laws (especially ones like this which will almost never be used, and merely serve to justify bureaucracy).

Re:Fuck You

[sgant]

I'm 21, male, and was molested by two different people from 2-12 years old.
Don't you dare tell me that we are NOT locked into a behavior because of what happened to us as children. It is very, very difficult to overcome your sexual erges.

If this is legit, then I'm sorry for what happened to you...but you are NOT locked into your behavior. You do NOT have to go out and molest a child. You DO have control over yourself. You're coping out and are a complete coward if you really think like this.

The FACT is that you are in complete control of what you do. If you molest a child, then YOU did it. You made a conscience decision to molest that child...and for that you should be punished. NO EXCUSES! I'm so sick of this bullshit of "oh, don't blame me, blame the guy that blah blah blah blah"...sorry pal, rationalize this all you want, but the fact is it's on your shoulders.

It's a tough road I'm sure. I'm sure you have really bad feelings and yes, it will haunt you the rest of your life...but think about the kid that you may molest. Do you want to condem him or her to a lifetime of horror?

Sexual urges are one thing...ACTING on those urges is another. Seek help and GET help...it's ok to get help you know. We all need a little help in our lives. And do not act on your urges. I wish you well.